


It was his

by bloodandcream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic, Gardening, M/M, companship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 04:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1455940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/pseuds/bloodandcream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He enjoyed the warm feel of the sun on his skin and damp give of soft earth through his fingers, but he also enjoyed the scratch of thistles and ache in his knees from kneeling, he enjoyed feeling everything, because it was his body and it was alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It was his

**Author's Note:**

> (Mostly Cas-centric, but it is Sastiel, perhaps slightly Au but lets just pretend Castiel is staying at the bunker and Sam isn't possessed by Gadreel and they can just garden and read in peace.)

Castiel liked to garden without shoes or gloves.

He had found a small patch of earth in a clearing only a few minutes walk from the bunker, flooded with sunlight for most of the day – he checked at various hours – and large enough to tend a small vegetable patch. Dean and Sam assumed he wanted to contribute, but that was only partially the reason Castiel found himself in the clearing most days he wasn’t on a hunt for Metatron or Gadreel with them.

Unable to talk to the bees anymore - there weren’t any hives near by that he’d found yet and couldn’t simply fly to them anywhere, not to mention he didn’t have his grace with which to commune with the souls of all things living - Castiel still found comfort in attempting to commune with nature. He had cherished the bees because their connected hive mind had reminded him of how the angel’s used to communicate. At least when heaven was a little quieter without the cacophony of war and he could talk openly to his brothers along the wavelength they were all tuned to. The bees communicated similarly to this, and they had a remarkable sense of duty and loyalty to their queen, it almost made Castiel feel at home when he knew he would never be welcome there again, when he let his grace unfurl and brush against the thrumming hive mind of the bees. Castiel had felt comfortable listening to their incessant chatter when he was shunned by the rest of the angels. He couldn’t listen to them now.

The silence was so profound in his head it manifested as a physical weight that wrapped around his body and suffocated him, but he felt he could breathe a little easier surrounded by plants and sunlight. It was difficult to communicate with words alone, even though he knew others like Sam and Dean couldn’t always understand him due to his inadequacies, he felt he could understand them. Now, it was all silent, he existed on a different wavelength he had never inhabited before, and talking seemed more painful than not talking, because he only noticed every way that it was different, every way that it was not right. The garden never attempted to hold a conversation with him. 

Sinking slender fingers into the dirt until it was caked under his nails and smudged on his skin, he worked quietly under the sun. Pulling clumps of weed apologetically because they would hinder the growth of his vegetables, he made sure to pluck the earth worms from the sod and place them back in the garden. Gardening was somehow something he did not have to research or adapt to as a human, perhaps it was instinctual, because nurturing life was ironically not something he was frequently assigned as an angel. He was a soldier, though he was tasked to ward chosen people now and then, listen to and answers prayers, in his long years Castiel had tallied more deaths by his hands than lives saved. It felt rewarding to nurture something, to tend the earth.

It was hard work to clear and prepare the patch of earth at first, pulling up overgrowth and turning the top soil, tilling rows and digging neat holes for the seeds Sam had helped him procure. To Castiel the sweat on his brow, the burn on the back of his neck, the small cuts along his hands, feet and forearms were all worth it. Dean would make jokes Castiel did not understand about spending too much time with a hoe. Sam offered to help, but Castiel liked the silence and time to think. 

When he came back to the bunker dirty and scuffed up with a slight wince to his gait, Dean reprimanded him to wear gloves and shoes. Sam however, sat him down and kneeled in front of him with a wet cloth and tweezers, cleaning his feet and finding thistles and thorns to pluck out. Castiel was more careful of where he stepped from then on. He did not wear gloves or shoes. Dean asked him once why he refused to wear gloves when he came back with a nasty patch of scratches across both palms from an unfortunate encounter with a deceptively scratchy weed whose name he did not know. It took Castiel several more trips to his garden, during which time Dean lost interest in the answer, to realize that he enjoyed feeling it.

He enjoyed the warm feel of the sun on his skin and damp give of soft earth through his fingers, but he also enjoyed the scratch of thistles and ache in his knees from kneeling, he enjoyed feeling everything, because it was his body and it was alive. 

Dean was not around to finish the conversation when Castiel came to this realization, but Sam was. The hair at Castiel’s nape and temples was curled with sweat, he couldn’t wash all the dirt out from under his nails, there was a patch of mysterious rash up one forearm, the other had a smattering of small scratches, his nose was sun burned and his feet were adapting with calluses impressively. As he scrubbed his skin in the kitchen sink and Sam brought a salve for what he stated was most likely poison ivy, the young hunter sat at the kitchen table and kept him company when Castiel felt like attempting to communicate something meaningful.

The fallen angel found Sam to be incredibly perceptive and astute. He had long ago sloughed away his presumptions about the boy king, about the corruption of the demon’s blood in Sam’s veins, about his role bound as Lucifer’s vessel. Recently in Sam he found someone struggling to reconcile a growing list of rifts between the actions of his body and the will of his soul. As an angel Castiel never question the possession of his vessel, after receiving first permission he rarely revaluated Jimmy Novak. Occupying what was inarguably his own body and solely his own body, fully human, graceless, wingless, void of any lingering traces of Jimmy - quiet and foreign to him – he found Sam interested in discussing the machinations of interaction between mind, body and soul.

Sam understood why he liked to feel with his body, the warmth of the sun and the sting of a nettle alike. There was a connection there somewhere along the way, when an external stimuli became internal, when the physical sensation became a mental observation, Castiel couldn’t quite pin point it, couldn’t figure out exactly where and how and why the periphery of the internal landscape meshed and interacted with the external. He felt he could get lost in his own mind sometimes, enveloped in the silence, but he reminded himself of the limitations and capabilities of his physical body to remain grounded.

There was something else growing in his body that reacted to Sam’s presence, or sometimes merely the thought of him. It was a sort of warmth beneath his ribs, a constriction in his chest, it was confusing and at first Castiel thought it might be a reaction like that his skin had to poison ivy. When Sam smiled and stood next to him at the large kitchen sink washing fresh vegetables, slicing a tomato and a cucumber to munch on raw as they prepared the small bounty Castiel harvested, Sam was happy and easy to give praise, seeming glad to have another on his side against Dean in the food battle department. Sam stated it would not be easy, but they could sneak fresh vegetables into sauces and mince it with ground meats to feed it to Dean. Sam seemed to relish the prospect of a co conspirator. It amused Castiel, and somehow caused a bodily reaction of raised temperature, a warm flush under his skin. Castiel noticed that Sam’s cheeks were reddened, perhaps he would know what it was.

When Castiel broached the topic later, approaching Sam in the study where the other was comfortable surrounded by books, the young hunter listened intently as Castiel explained the physical sensations and asked for guidance, but it seemed to make Sam nervous as he was suddenly unable to look Castiel in the eye, the red flush returning to his cheeks as well, his fingers fidgeting with the pages of the book open in his lap. Sam’s voice was tentative and more quiet that Castiel had heard in a long time when he asked just how much Castiel liked him. 

Somehow they managed to expand into a weeks long conversation parsed out in sections ranging from a few minutes to a few hours over the varied human concepts and interpretations of love, relationships, intimacy, sexual intercourse, procreation, orientation, and many things Castiel was only vaguely aware of but had never given thorough consideration to before.

He consulted his garden. Though the vegetables had been harvested for the season, the earth needed to be prepared for winter so it would be fertile come spring. Castiel gave much thought to his new body –or at least the new status of his body – and his relation to Sam, pondering the question of why he had been gravitating towards the other. 

For as many reserves as Castiel had at first in pursuing tangled human intimacy, he did not like the awkward clipped way Sam had been moving around him since he opened the discussion. Quite without his own deliberate intention, Castiel found himself crowding in closer, filing away minutia like little notes to be reviewed later, the way Sam’s neck smelled, the way his hair swayed, the way his fingers curled around a book, the way he slouched and curled on himself making his presence smaller, the way veins were traceable under the skin along his forearms. 

Sam caved eventually, it was like a small implosion, he was seated at a simple wooden chair pouring over a book when Castiel came from behind to lean over and point something out on the pages, placing one hand on Sam’s shoulder and practically laying his head on the other, murmuring in Sam’s ear. The young hunter curled in more on himself, face drawing in on itself, imploding in a brief fraction of a moment before twisting his torso around and surging forward to kiss Castiel. 

It was nothing like the few kisses he had received prior, nothing like the detached kiss of the prostitute Dean had taken him to see, nothing like the occasional familial kisses of his brothers, it was warm and shy and left him wanting. Sam kissed him then, and he returned it, finishing the point he was making about what research they were on in a flustered and distracted state. 

Castiel was pleased that Sam was friendly around him again, more open even than before, as eager to resume their debates regarding free will and the status of the soul as he was to continue exploring newer territories, namely kissing. Castiel found he liked Sam’s lips, plush and soft, kind in the way they pressed against his. He also learned to appreciate Sam’s hands more, their breadth against his hips, their warmth seeping through his clothes, eventually the rough drag of calluses against the curve of his back when Sam pushed up under his clothes. 

Sam was uncertain at first, it seemed, for as new to being human as Castiel was, but the ex angel was not new to thought, to existence, to having want. He acclimated easily, adaptive and enthusiastic to understand how his body and soul worked together. Eventually Sam’s lips and hands skimmed over every dip and curve of his body, as his own did in kind to the other, cataloguing and correlating reactions in the press of skin here to the hitch of breath, and the swipe of a tongue somewhere else to a shuddering gasp. 

It was more confusing then Castiel could have possibly anticipated, the depth and breadth of emotions that surged through him when Sam opened completely and shared his body, exposed and vulnerable, Castiel had been slowly acclimating to the reactions of physical stimuli but he was not prepared for this intensity of affection, protectiveness, companionship. It was a heat in his body and his soul. 

It was his, and he was alive.


End file.
